Yep, it aims to provide an integrated development tool to design, code and publish projects from a single app, and so it has a (somewhat simple as of right now) code editor built in. I wrote a networked debugger for it, so it will actually do backtraces and lets you jump around in the code if errors occur as well as execute code directly in your application while it runs. I'm trying to design it in such a way that it will still be a useful asset editing tool even if you use C++ or want to use your own editor or build pipeline for Lua (you can still use the debugger since the Polycode player will try to connect locally to the IDE if it's running).

Me too, this is really shaping up. I liked it before, but this looks to be really shaping up.

So is 2D mode separated from 3D mode? Or is it just a different 'view'...?

The 2D is completely separated from 3D for ease of use (though you can render a 2d screen on top of a 3d scene and vice versa no problem), but on the basic level they share the same base entity class, so working with 2d and 3d is very similar. The 2d entities just have 2d-specific stuff added to them, like screen input events, 2d transforms, and other 2d-specific stuff.

sorry I know this had been addressed before but the polycode site is currently down. Just wanted to clarify something

If you make a game in you can include the player so from the perspective of the player it's an application without any extra dependancies. Is that correct?

If you make a game in C++ does it require the player?

The site isn't actually down, the pages with details are just not linked (presumably because they're outdated) -- you can still access them though: http://polycode.org/learning/

Previously it said, re lua apps, "When you're ready to publish the app, you can bundle the polyapp file with a standalone player so that anyone can run your application." So yes, it's just a normal application to the end user.